Level-up your mild, flat spring lettuces to flavor-forward, texture rich salad. Crisp Asparagus, Peas, and Snap Peas, along with rich and funky mozzarella or feta cheese perfectly balance one another, and the finishing touch is the sweet tart Lemon Dressing. It's the BEST spring salad! Shall we?
Ingredients You Need for Asparagus and Pea Salad
These are the ingredients you need for this Asparagus Pea Salad recipe:
- Asparagus, obviously! 1 pound
- Peas, 1 cup
- Snap peas, 2 cups
- Cheese, 8 ounces, mozzarella perline (tiny balls) or feta if you're funky
And for the Lemon Dressing
- Garlic, 1 clove
- Lemon zest from 1 lemon
- Lemon juice, from the same lemon
- Olive oil, ½ cup
- Dijon mustard, 1 teaspoon
- Sea salt, 1 teaspoon plus more to taste
Instructions for How to Make Asparagus Peas and Snap Peas Salad
Make the Lemon Dressing first, then assemble the Salad.
Place all ingredients for the Lemon Dressing in a small blender or food processor, whirl until emulsified, and set aside.
Alternative: Make sure garlic is as finely minced as possible. Place all ingredients in a jar with a tight fitting lid and shake until thoroughly combined.
Serve as a composed salad: Arrange remaining ingredients for Asparagus Salad in a large salad bowl or platter with high sides. Drizzle dressing over salad, and serve extra dressing and cheese on the side.
Place salad ingredients into a large mixing bowl, drizzle with dressing, and toss together.
Buying and Storing Asparagus, the Pro-Tips
When is Asparagus Season? Now!
Asparagus season starts in early Spring and lasts through mid-summer, varying slightly by region. Personally, I find aspragus direct from the farmers' market (southern California) are the absolute crispest in April and May.
However, you might find asparagus in grocery stores even through July!
How to Store Asparagus
Best Dressing for Asparagus Peas and Snap Peas Salad
Any salad with bright, crisp vegetables as ingredients is best with a similarly fresh, tart dressing, as opposed to a creamy dressing. For this Asparagus Peas Snap Peas Salad, use a Lemon Dressing included as part of the recipe below.
Advance Prep, Leftovers, and Storage
Make the Lemon Dressing up to five days in advance.
Slice the asparagus up to 1 day in advance.
Once the salad has been dressed, leftovers of the salad will keep in the refrigerator up to 3 days.
Tools and Equipment
You don't technically need any special equipment to make this Strawberry Salad. You can simply use a large knife and cutting board to chop all vegetables. However, that doesn't mean there are a couple of gadgets and tools that might make this salad even easier to throw together than it already is.
- Salad spinner - this has saved my sanity because wet, soggy greens are the worst, and arugula in particular needs to be BONE DRY to keep it from wilting.
- Chef's knife - my daily workhorse knife
- Cutting board - large and sturdy so you have enough surface area for all the fluffy greens, and doesn't move around on the countertop
- Japanese-style mandoline - to make lightning fast work of slicing the firmer vegetables. When you start eating a LOT of vegetables, this will be a lifesaver.
For the Hot Honey Balsamic Vinaigrette, these tools are also helpful
- BlendJet cordless personal blender - I don't know how I survived my salad days without this
- 2-ounce (4 tablespoons) liquid measuring cup
- Garlic press
- Mini whisk
- Wide-mouth mason jars and air-tight screw-on lids
What Else to Serve with Asparagus, Peas, and Snap Pea Salad
- Add cooked quinoa to give the salad a plant-based protein boost!
- Add 2 cups shredded cooked chicken breast to make it a hearty main dish salad
- Top with a generous piece of omega-3-rich salmon to make this an antioxidant-rich meal.
Asparagus, Peas, and Snap Peas Salad Ideas
This Asparagus, Peas, and Snap Peas Salad is endlessly flexible. You will never go wrong adding, subtracting or substituting.
Green vegetables that you can add
- Avocado. Adds a rich, luxurious texture element
- Romaine/Little Gems. If you HAVE to have some kind of leafy green in a salad, greens that are crunchy like Romaine, or its baby cousin, Little Gems are the only option, chopped into ½-inch pieces
- Cucumber. Additional refreshing crunch!
Cheese. Feta is always the favorite, the funk particularly complementary to the bright fresh asparagus and snap peas, but any fresh to semi-firm cheese works
- Mozzarella. Mild, but still adds umami, and the best is the "perline" format, small round balls that match the size and shape of the green peas.
- Goat Cheese/Chevre has a similar funk and bonus, it's made of goat milk, which might be more digestible for some people
- Ricotta salata sounds like ricotta, but is actually firm and salty so it's more like feta than cottage cheese-ish ricotta.
- Parm. The GOAT (but not goat) of firm, funky, salty cheese, make them into long paper thin shavings
Nuts or seeds of any kind can add extra crunch, as well as some protein, but make sure they're toasted so they're crunchy! And if you really want to add another dimension of flavor to the salad, get nuts that have chili or Everything Bagel seasoning!
- Almonds, a classic match with the season
- Pistachios, another classic match with the season (though slightly more expensive)
- Walnuts, softer in texture
- Pepitas, chile seasoned pepitas also bring some spice to add to the flavor balance
Asparagus and Pea Salad with Lemon Dressing Recipe
Ingredients
- 1 pound asparagus, sliced on deep bias
- 1 cup English peas
- 2 cups snap peas, sliced on bias
- 8 ounces feta cheese cubed or crumbled
Lemon Dressing
- 1 clove garlic finely minced or grated
- 1 lemon, zest and juice ~ ¼ cup from 1 large or 2 small small/medium lemons
- ½ cup olive oil
- 1 teaspoon Dijon mustard
- 1 teaspoon sea salt plus more to taste
Instructions
Make Lemon Dressing
- Place ingredients for dressing—1 clove minced garlic, lemon zest and juice from 1 large lemon, ½ cup olive oil, 1 teaspoon Dijon mustard, 1 teaspoon sea salt—in a small bowl and whisk together until emulsified. Alternatively, place all ingredients in a mason jar, cover securely with lid and shake until well combined.
Blanch Asparagus and Peas
- Cut off dried, fibrous ends of asparagus and slice each stalk on an extreme bias into ¼-inch wide pieces. Place sliced asparagus in a colander.
- Bring a pot of water to a boil. When the water starts to boil, add fresh peas. Once the water returns to a boil, immediately turn off heat, and drain peas and water into the colander with the asparagus. Immediately rinse with coldest water from the tap.
Assemble Asparagus and Pea Salad
- Slice snap peas on extreme bias, similar in shape to the asparagus.
- Place blanched asparagus and peas, snap peas, and feta in a bowl. Drizzle with about half the dressing and toss until the vegetables are evenly coated. Taste and add more dressing if needed.
Notes
Nutrition
Best Spring Salad Recipes
Food for Afterthoughts
Once you move in together, you can't really eat an entire party-size plastic tub of hummus with a swirl of sriracha for dinner by yourself in front of your laptop on the coffee table sitting cross-legged on the floor, with the broken chip dregs in the bottom of the bag of kettle potato chips because that's all you had in the cupboard when you got home because you forgot to buy pita chips in the pride-sucking rush to get through the store so all those other people in front of and behind you in the checkout line buying whole roast chickens and salmon fillets-for-four can't judge you and your haagen-dazs pint, "two" carrots and tub of hummus for the obvious...
Or maybe you can.
When we started dating, I graduated from single-girl store-bought plastic tub to honeymoon dating phase homemade hummus. That's what you do, you know. You shower every morning; wear full-face makeup during the day, cook dinner that has all five food groups over three courses while wearing an actual, cute outfit.
You make hummus from scratch with garbanzo beans that you soaked and cooked yourself.
The honeymoon, however, doesn't last forever. In fact, I think it normally lasts for about nine months, less if you move in together within six.
And two years and five months later on a Tuesday night after you've asked each other 18 times each "What do you want to do for dinner?" hoping the other will offer to throw together a farmers market's worth of fresh produce for a salad, roll out pasta by hand and roast a free-range chicken to no avail, the two of you will actually find yourselves in yesterday's pajamas and board shorts, hunched over the kitchen island across from each other at 10 PM, taking turns scooping hummus from a plastic tub with the only things you had in the fridge, leftover radishes and love.
Eventually you two will find your way. He'll take you somewhere you've never been for date night. You'll re-discover that cookbook, the one that you both raved about on your second date.
And even if you do eat hummus for dinner, it'll be out of a bowl.
With a fork.
Wearing cute new undies.
figeater says
I was the single girl behind you with the rotisserie chicken, a half gallon ice cream, blood orange soda and schoolboy cookies by LU. Now, I share a bag of dry broken shin ramen mixed with seasoning packet w/ my mister and he always hogs the bag and eats more than his fair share and then I think my dear god i miss gelson's and why the hell are we wearing rags? Is this a Les Miserables casting call? Nope but that's life.
Diane, A Broad says
Yep, I've been through the hummus-from-scratch phase... then I realized that my gentleman prefers the store-bought stuff. Sigh.
Question: do you know how long cooked quinoa lasts in the fridge? I made this huge batch on Monday and there's a ton of it left, and I think it's fine, but...
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